


Carnival

by kitkatt0430



Series: Spooktober - 2019 [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Aromantic Character, Gen, Misgendering, Non-binary character, Queerphobia, Questioning character, Self Acceptance, Unwanted Advances, discussing pronouns, enbyphobia, fall carnival, mentoring, pop up piano bar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2019-10-12
Packaged: 2020-11-25 16:24:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20915045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitkatt0430/pseuds/kitkatt0430
Summary: Nia works at a popup piano bar at a traveling carnival and, while in a little town in Kentucky, Nia finds emself helping out a kid who's only just taken their first steps on a road not unlike the one Nia's been walking since the day ey found the word agender.





	Carnival

There were a lot pros to working for a traveling carnival, in Nia's opinion.

The travel itself was probably one of the most obvious pros, of course. Ey could travel all around the nation, seeing all sorts of landscapes, meet all kinds of people... Nia was from Texas, down near Corpus Christi and if eir parents had their way, ey would've been stuck there eir whole lives. But after graduating high school, Nia saved up for a small 200 square foot trailer house, hooked it up to a sturdy truck, bought a keyboard, and joined up with the Carnival of Curiosities the next time it went through town. Eir parents were furious, but Nia was so glad to finally be free to find emself.

The piano was another obvious pro to the whole carnival thing. Nia was good at playing and enjoyed emself immensely whenever ey had time to play. Working for the carnival, ey got to play pretty much all the time. Sometime ey would play for the magic shows or the big tent productions - short plays repeated throughout the day, basically - or the pop up piano bar.

Then there was the fact that the people Nia traveled with, who'd become eir dearest friends, respect eir gender and pronouns in a way eir family never did. Traveling with the carnival, Nia was free to be emself. When ey went from she/her to they/them pronouns, the changes were respected. And again when switching to ey/em.

It wouldn't last forever, but for now? The carnival was home.

* * *

Tonight was a piano bar night. Now that Nia was twenty-one, eir coworkers had taught em to bartend. The pop-up piano bar opened at four pm and ran until eleven, when the attractions and rides closed and so too did the rest of the carnival. And Nia would spend the entire time switching off between playing the piano and tending bar.

It was now nearing seven o'clock and Nia and, despite eir love of the piano, ey was looking forward to getting back behind the bar tonight. The carnival had stopped in a small rural town in Kentucky for what was supposed to be two weeks and ey were already looking forward to moving on to the next stop. There was a small group of young men who'd shown up every night since the carnival set up three days earlier. They were assholes.

There was one in particular that kept hitting on Nia and even if ey wasn't relatively certain ey was aromantic, his advances would have been unwanted. The four of them were back again tonight, making rude requests and ignoring the little sign ey always put up either on the piano or on the bar to indicate eir pronouns. Nia gritted eir teeth every time ey heard them refer to em as a girl.

Behind the bar, ey was too busy making drinks for the group to be able to disturb em much, but at the piano they'd just walk on over because making musical requests was permitted. Didn't mean those requests got fulfilled and Nia did eir utmost to ignore the jerks, but...

"I'll take over early," Julie murmured in Nia's ear, giving the men in the corner a dark look. "We could get them thrown out," she added.

"They haven't done enough yet to get more than a warning and they just had that. They get their one warning every night, settle down, and leave around eight or nine." Nia scowled as ey vacated the piano bench, letting Julie settle there.

"Well, Harry better be keeping a close on them anyway," Julie grumbled, sparing a glance to the guy acting as the bar's bouncer. Mostly he just stood around looking buff and intimidating and watched for any potential pick-pockets or anyone trying to duck out on their tab. But he was indeed keeping a watchful eye on the young men who'd been hassling Nia.

Next week, Nia would be switched to playing the piano for their Batman spoof play in a tent across the park from where the piano bar was set up. Ey couldn't wait.

Heading behind the bar, Nia joined the other bartender, Greg, and started filling orders. Until...

"I'll have a martini, shaken not stirred."

"Yeah, sure, kid. It'll be ready in what, five years? Six?"

The boy laughed, though there was a shadow of a bruise on the kid's face that was worrying. "Worth a shot. Do you have any sodas?"

Nia nodded and rattled off their short list of soda.

"Sprite, then."

Ey snatched a sprite out of the cooler behind the bar and handed it over in exchange for $1.25. "Mind if I ask about that bruising on your face, kid?"

Eyes shifted to glance at the little sign Nia had moved to the bar. 'My name is Nia. My pronouns are ey/em/eir. Please be respectful of the staff.'

"I didn't know those were pronouns. How do you pronounce those?"

"Like they/them/their but without the 'th' sound at the start." Nia allowed for the misdirection, but... fifteen or sixteen year old kid hanging out alone in a piano bar at a carnival at seven-twenty in the evening. With a bruise on his face.

"Hey, two more of the Halloween Ciders and a Coors Lite," one of the of age bar patrons requested - thankfully not the young twits.

"What tab is this going on?" Nia asked, already grabbing three glasses from under the bar.

The woman gave her a name and Nia noted the drinks down on the tab sheet, then finished pouring out the drinks. Then ey ended up making a cosmo, a couple of tequila shots, and an apple martini for a few others. The quartet in the back ordered some more drinks, but thankfully Greg intercepted them and handled the drink requests himself.

The kid at the bar was starting his second soda by then.

"So why are you in here instead of bobbing for apples, riding a coaster, or winning some of those ridiculous Halloween themed prizes out there? I've got my eyes on one of those plush bats. Might have to stick around long enough to win one on my day off." Nia was serious about the bat; it was purple and had a ridiculous cartoon smile that made em giggle when ey first saw it being put out in the game kiosks.

"I, uh..." the kid sighed, reflexively touching the bruise on his face. "My best friend hit me, so better in here until its time for my parents to pick me up than wandering out there where I might run into him and the others."

"Why'd he hit you?" Nia asked, while thinking that he couldn't be that great a friend if his answer to this kid saying or doing something he didn't like was violence.

"How'd you know that you, uh... how'd you know you weren't a girl?" There was a sort of desperate tinge to the kids voice and... oh... he wasn't changing the subject at all, was he?

"Some people who're non-binary feel like maybe their gender is like a shirt that doesn't fit or something like that. But for me it was that gender didn't make sense at all. Like it couldn't be real and if it was then I certainly didn't have one. It was a feeling I had as a kid and it just got stronger over time until the idea of someone calling me a girl, using feminine pronouns for me... I thought I'd scream if it didn't stop. When I used they/them pronouns for myself for the first time, I was so happy I cried. Ended up switching to ey/em later of course, but... calling myself non-binary and agender felt right the way calling myself a girl never did."

The kid took a drink of his sprite and stared down at the bar top. "Sometimes I don't feel like a boy. And I... I tried to explain that to Max today and he called me names and I said something rude back and then he..." the reflexive touch to his bruised face again. "Is that... is it normal? To feel like your one gender sometimes and other times... not any gender at all?"

Ey nodded. "Yeah, kid. That's totally normal. There's some terms you might be interested in... do you have your phone on you? We've got wifi here, so I've got a few websites you can check out. Otherwise I can write them down for you." When the kid pulled out his cell phone, Nia gave him the urls of a couple websites: the non-binary wiki, the non-binary resource tumblr, and transequality.org amongst others.

Nia had to get back to serving drinks after that and then swapped back to the piano at eight. Ey asked Julia and Greg to keep an eye on the kid and then started playing a slow, jazzy tune on the upright piano.

Around eight-thirty, the troublesome young men slunk out of the bar and Nia breathed a sigh of relief, eir music taking on a more upbeat feel to it. And then about fifteen minutes later, the kid at the bar got up and came over to em. 

"Thank you for the websites, they've uh..." the kid's eyes were suspiciously red as he wiped at them. "I get what you meant about being so happy you cried because this... makes me feel like I'm not alone."

"You're not alone," Nia promised. "And not everyone'll react like your friend did."

"Thanks." The kid wandered out of the bar and Nia hoped he'd be alright. Ey remembered being that age and feeling like gender was a noose around eir neck. But maybe those websites would help that kid breath easier than ey had. And maybe... maybe Nia was starting to have an idea of what ey wanted to do after leaving the carnival.

Advocacy and outreach, helping new enbies find themselves... it was a thought, anyway. Worth pondering on, that was for sure.


End file.
